San Francisco Fire Department Urged to End Opposition to Attempts to Slow Traffic

Posted on January 23, 2015

For the past several years, we've been engaged in a dialogue with the Fire Department about how best to embrace two critical public safety needs: fire safety and street safety. The Fire Department has advocated for wider streets, given the size of its trucks, whereas wider streets are more dangerous for all users, leading to increased speeds, more accidents, and more severe accidents. We want our fire trucks to be able to get to fires and other emergencies quickly, and, in fact, our department does an outstanding and heroic job doing just that. We also want our streets to be safe -- we have way too many accidents that injure or kill pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers -- and good street design is essential for safe streets. If the Fire Department is concerned about its trucks ability to maneuver on San Francisco's many, many narrow streets, the Department needs to evaluate how it can improve its trucks' ability to maneuver those streets.